78 HE. , \ "<,? r" --- . 1- l' -...- . if f!? HEATItE-l. - \ ,- . .'!l,' ,. 'I - $ dJJ" 1\I J TH R.IDDL OF THE R. VI W R.'5 5POU5 X some time during the now de- parted sleight-of-hand program offered by Milbourne Christo- pher at the Longacre, the gifted wife of a morning-newspaper critic disappeared abruptly from the auditorium She was just two rows in front of me, and I am sure she was sitting there, morose but tractable, when the performer execute.d the Chinese string trick, but when I looked again, right after the colored balls had turned into an egg, she was gone. There was no puff of smoke, no smell of brimstone, no noise, no appar- ent mechanism, no visible passage up the aisle-nothing blatant or unladylike. She was simply there at one moment, and at the next she was absent, leaving behind her a husband still doggedly tak- Ing notes and beside him an admirable vacancy. It was the evening's most suc- \... " " , \\ \ '. \ . . " + ' "\ -- :0" ... ,'. '\ ,'.. 4" """ f. ,\ : ... ", , '" .... ....' .. t\ \ \ , ," ,,'1,\0 \ -' , ,- ..... ... ... 11 .. -....... I j , .,. , '- .J , I n I , I III . II H ", " II r I \' I I IJ lIP I 111 \I II 'I I' 11/ 11/ I I oJ, . ø I 'l1li11 II lit IU I 1 fl n., .. t,J/IIqllll . RfJI lUll! ù ....u f , 1If 1M! -11\ · 1\ 11 \I " .. ... '" &.1 .. cessful piece of prestidigitation, but I suspect that Mr. Christopher's part in it was purely inspirational. Beyond this enviable vanishment, the bIll had, I'm afraid, very little to offer, either to professional magicians, who were present in extraordinary abun- dance (Row E was solid with them, and their comments were generally polite), or to the laity, whose expressions, ex- cept for those of a few children here and there, struck me as resolutely indul- gent. For about two hours, Mr. Chris- topher produced the conventional mir- acles of his trade, causing a variety of small objects to multiply or diminish, or shift from place to place, or change into something else; meshing and un- meshing the metal rings; pouring water from an inexhaustible contaIner; extri- catIng a stipulated card from the deck \ ) "Q. .f;: / - , -I. , .;: -*. . "JO "'r..' 'V , ....: .. ",. " ' r' \ .... - , J 7JJ ;:'.' I .. ,. 't'.' ". :oJ :'..:..:.... 4' 1.l. 'r \ '\ HKING OF H AR. T 5" (it was the ten of clubs, and it is my considered opinion that the deck con- sisted of nothing but tens of clubs); burning up dollar bills; sawing a child of the progressive-school type in half; and, bound and manacled and placed in a cabinet, somehow managing to rattle a tambourine, ring a bell, and write a weather report on a slate. It was all in- genious enough (I am no connoisseur of these matters, but it seemed to me that Mr. Christopher showed really as- tonishing dexterity in flicking a rope into complicated knots), but it was also all fairly familiar and there were no effects in the grand style, reminiscent of such past masters as Thurston, Black- stone, Herrmann the Great, and Hou- dini. It was, on the whole, magic for a children's party, and I think it might have been wise if Mr. Christopher had kept it there. The matter of personality and tech- nique must also be discussed, and here, too, I have a feeling that the perform- ance was uninspired. This wizard was a ruddy man, of middle years and size, wearing a gleaming smile and a dinner coat no more hapeless than the conceal- ment of his apparatus must demand. He was, in other words, un- usual in no particular, and this, I think, was a mistake. Warlocks should look strange, and preferably a little sinis- ter. Tails and a silk hat are good, and so are white gloves and some bizarre arrangement of the hair upon the face. I like an accent, too, and, more than any of these things, I like an attendant blonde, a shapely girl, carefully trained to give all im- pression of absolute im- becility, upon whom I can speculate whenever sorcery begins to pall. Mr. Christopher em- ployed no blonde, choos- ing to rely for assistance on recruits from the audience, who on open- ing night were all male and, though SUSpiCIOUS- ly talented, held almost no emotional interest for me. This, again, was unfortunate, because if ever a thaumaturgist in the long history of the game needed a blonde, it was this same -..":::....: .". ( V' The study in self-enchantment on the right is Donald Cook, who represents a comic-strip artist in the comedy at the Lyceum. H'ts compan'tons, Cloris Leachman and Jackie Cooper, may seem to be admiring him, but they won't for long.